The Moral Theory Of Utilitarianism

The moral theory of utilitarianism is based on the idea that actions are considered “good” if they produce pleasure, and they are considered “not good” if they produce pain. The goal is to choose the actions that produce the most pleasure or happiness for the most people. This seems like it would obviously be preferred by everyone, but most people fail to realize that this type of “perfect” society would require them to make a lot of personal sacrifices for the good of the people as a whole. In my opinion, every human being, whether it is subconsciously or consciously, put their happiness above anyone else’s. But according to the moral theory of utilitarianism, you cannot be selfish. Utilitarianism requires you to be willing to sacrifice your own happiness so that a majority of the people can be happy. According to utilitarian, John Stewart Mill, the willingness to sacrifice your own happiness is the best chance at achieving complete happiness. This is because making that sacrifice, your good for the good of others, is highly valued. Mill strongly believes that happiness is dependent on education and intellectual level. He uses an analogy with two ladders, one ladder represents lower level sources of happiness (i.e. sex, food, play), and they second ladder represents higher level sources of happiness (i.e. reading Shakespeare, looking at a spectacular painting). Now, according to Mill, only people of high intelligence get to experience the higher level pleasures, but anyone, even animals can experience the lower level pleasures. So, Mill believes that there are two kinds of pleasure and they …show more content…
Act utilitarianism is the idea that a specific act is right if it produces the most happiness of the most amount of people. Rule utilitarianism states that if there were a general rule about the act, then every time it would produce the most amount of happiness for the most amount of